22 July 2010

Where's the Apology for Prime Minister Binyomin Netanyahu, who by the way is the democratically elected leader of a sovereign People and State!

You mean it's perfectly ok to disrespect, snub, and embarrass a Leader of another country? Where's the Bow?

The White House did a sudden about-face Wednesday and begged for forgiveness from the black Agriculture Department employee whose ouster ignited an embarrassing political firestorm over race. She was offered a "unique opportunity" for a new job and said she was thinking it over. Yahoo

Division and tension between black and white Americans has cropped up repeatedly over Obama's 18 months in office, hurting his popularity and distracting from his political agenda. Reuters

With Apology, Fired Official Is Offered a New Job.....The White House apologized to Shirley Sherrod. The secretary of agriculture apologized to a black civil servant after firing her for remarks taken out of context. The White House and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack apologized profusely and repeatedly on Wednesday to a black midlevel official for the way she had been humiliated and forced to resign her Agriculture Department job after a conservative blogger put out a misleading video clip that seemed to show her admitting antipathy toward a white farmer.NYT.

New York’s Central Park is heading toward its warmest July on record after two heat waves this month, the National Weather Service reported. Extreme heat pushes aging power systems to their limits, increasing the odds of breakdown, according to grid monitors.

“July may not be the top, but it is going to be in the top five, and this is over 130 years worth of observation, so it is outstanding heat.”

A heat advisory was issued for New York City today, where the temperature in Central Park was 90 at 3 p.m. after three straight days above 90, according to the weather service. The definition of a heat wave is three consecutive days with temperatures of 90 degrees or higher.

Earlier this month, a heat wave gripped New York and the rest of the U.S. Northeast, driving temperatures into the 100s for several days and setting daily records across the region. The Central Park readings came within 3 degrees of the city’s highest temperature on record, 106 on July 9, 1936, according to the weather service.

The world last month posted its warmest June on record and its warmest average temperatures for April to June and January to June, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Global temperatures in June were 61.1 degrees, or 1.22 degrees higher than the 20th century average of 59.9, according to a NOAA statement.

In some locations, temperatures, when combined with humidity, will feel as hot as 115 degrees, according to the weather service. An excessive heat warning is issued when forecasters expect several days of high temperatures and humidity

18 July 2010

The first of the two pipelines, both owned by state-owned giant China National Petroleum Corporation, exploded at 6pm. An explosion at a pipe transporting crude oil from a ship to a storage tank blew up yesterday evening, causing a blast at a second, nearby duct.More than 2,000 firefighters and 338 engines from 14 different cities worked through the night in the north-eastern port of Dalian to put out the blaze which illuminated the sky in a strange orange glow.

A UFO sighting in China over an airport in 2010 has caused a significant amount of buzz. The UFO over China has made many people who are UFO chasers and seekers very excited about the prospects of another world trying to make contact in China. The sightings come near the anniversary of the infamous UFO sightings in New Mexico in 1947 called “The Roswell Incident.”

These days the incident looks more believable, but with technology comes the ability to make things appear to be true, even if they aren’t. This could be true of the UFO in China. According to CNN, The UFO over China first appeared over an airport, and then over the city of Chongqing. The Chongqing sighting left lantern-like lights appearing in the sky, which made many people stand and watch in awe.

What could be the explanation for the UFO sightings in China? One such explanation could be that there was some sort of military exercise that was top-secret being perpetrated over the sky. Still there are others that conclude that this is the most credible UFO sighting, and means that there is another planet of beings ready to make contact with us. No matter what you believe, this is a great story.

While Over in D.C.

Mayland 3.6 Earthquake Shakes up Obama's House

early Friday

csmoitor.com reports that a 'minor' earthquake shook residents awake in the DC area. The quake hit 5:04 am and was centered in the Rockville, MD area. Aftershocks could occur over the next couple days.

13 July 2010

New York is no stranger to brutal heat waves. But thanks to air conditioning, newspapers no longer have to print a daily list of “heat prostrations,” which included dozens of citizens overcome by hot weather. A check of The New York Times archive drew story after story on a specific heat spell, plus a list of people felled by heatstroke.

An article about an 89-degree day in June 1899 listed these casualties:

“Isaac Shapiro, fifty-eight years old, of 292 Division Street, was overcome in front of his home. He was removed to Gouverneur Hospital. “An unknown woman, poorly dressed and about sixty years old, was found unconscious last night at Locust Avenue and 133rd Street by Policeman McGrath of the East 138th Street Station. The woman seemed to have been overcome by heat. She was taken to Harlem Hospital.”

RETURN TO THE YEAR 2010 and "Global Change's" CALL TO GIVE UP AIR CONDITIONING

The Washington Post has an article about a world without Air Conditioning: "In a country that's among the world's highest greenhouse-gas emitters, air conditioning is one of the world power-guzzlers...A/C's obvious public-health benefits during severe heat waves does not justify its lavish use in everyday life for months on end..." See Washington area boils under High Heat, a nice collage of 36 - washingtonians in the heat.

AND NOW WE RETURN TO 1910

While we're into nostalgia from the early days of New York here are some interesting tidbits. Most of these come from:

Chrown Heights is an antique treasure: Here is Raskins Fish Market stillgoing strong in Crown Heights, bears the original signage from 1961 with the old phone exchanges. In the SLS-9521 phone number, the SLS stands for Slocum (that's another old story about Brooklyn).

Eastern Parkway was conceived in 1866 as the nation's first Parkway:

Here's how it looked in 1920

The Rebbe's Eastern Parkway today

(by Yehuda Ceitlin/COLlive.com)JUMP BACK TO THE 1900's

What to do on a sweltering hot day: go to the beach!When Williamsburg was a separate cityIn 1827, long before it became home to hipsters and Hasidic Jews, Williamsburg was established as the Village of Williamsburgh

Grand Army Plaza's Civil War President

Inside the Memorial Arch is a relief of President Lincoln, on horseback.

12 July 2010

“Moses wrote their departures according to their journeys … and these were their journeys according to their departures.” -- Numbers 33:2, this week’s Torah portion.

“While the reasonable man adapts himself to the world, the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” -- George Bernard Shaw

The concluding portion of the Book of Numbers (Maasei), read this week the world over, begins by offering a summation of the Israelites’ forty-year journey through the wilderness, as they ventured toward the Promise Land. This odyssey across the Sinai Peninsula was comprised of forty-two segments, ultimately leading the young nation along the eastern coast of the Jordan River as they prepared to enter the Land of Canaan through the city of Jericho.

The Bible, before documenting the specific route of their journey, notes that “Moses wrote their departures according to their journeys … and these were their journeys according to their departures.”

This diction is as strange as it is perplexing. Three questions come to mind.

First, what is the actual meaning of “departures according to their journeys,” and “journeys according to their departures?”

Second, why is the verse redundant? What is the difference between “departures according to their journeys,” and “journeys according to their departures?”

Third, why does the Torah flip the sequence of terms, first mentioning “departures” followed by “journeys,” and then in the second half of the verse switching the order, referring first to “journeys” and then to “departures?”

Past & future

Two divergent roads define the voyage of Jewish history. There are the Jews who ascribe to the “departure” paradigm, and the Jews who embrace the “journey” paradigm.

The “journeying” Jews focus on the constant changes in history: the fluctuating trends, the cultural developments, the novel inventions, and the newly discovered wisdom. These Jews are sensitive to the winds of progression, to the alterations in the human climate, and to the opportunities and challenges that lay ahead. They aspire to define a Judaism – or a philosophy of life -- that would be relevant to the contemporary conversation of humanity in its journey toward its own self-defined “promised land.”

Yet in their zeal to embrace the future, they often abandon the past. In their passion to remain relevant today, they forfeit the power of yesteryear. In their yearning to capture the individual “your,” they neglect the depth of the “yore.” In their ambition to grow tall, they detach from the roots that have given them their original sap.

“By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he's wrong,” Charles Wadsworth once said. The youth, fresh in spirit, creative in ideas, often seeks to chart a new path, to take the road never traveled by. There is something monotonous about traveling in the footsteps of your ancestors, and there is something intoxicating about developing a path you can call your own.

In many ways, it was this perspective which gave birth to the contemporary Jewish world. As the winds of modernity swept Europe, as enlightenment and emancipation cast its glow on a downtrodden nation in the 18th century, millions of Jews felt that clinging to the life style and traditions of their ancestors would impede their bright journey to a new world order. In the process, they bid farewell to the old to embrace the new; they said goodbye to the yore to embrace the “your.”

As we know today, their good intentions were met with profound disappointment. On one hand, enlightenment in Europe and socialism in Russia turned against the Jews, and on the other hand, the descendants of the Jews who embraced them have been lost to our people. In their passion to journey ahead, to revolutionize the past, they failed to realize the power of eternity imbedded in their tradition and faith.

Then there are the “departure” Jews – those who are always looking back to the past, to their point of departure. Their primary focus is on the unchangeable truths of history. Life, in their vision, is not linear, but cyclical. Tradition, ritual, custom, law, faith do not change just because Voltaire gave us Enlightenment, Nietzsche taught us about choice, Tocqueville explained to us democracy, Freud discovered the subconscious, and Barak Obama called for change. “What was good for my great-great grandfather is good for me,” these Jews rooted in tradition exclaim.

Yet in their attempt to hold on to the sacred past, they often stifle the ability to utilize and actualize the new energy of today, to discern the voice of G-d not only in the ancient, but also in the present, not only in the world that was, but also in the world that is. In their hope to continue the chain of history by adding their identically matching link, they fail to create space for freshness, for creativity, for authentic self expression. In their genuine zeal to protect the “piano” of Judaism, they scoff at any new composition, failing to realize that the very same piano keys allow for infinite compositions. The word of G-d, articulated in the Torah, can and must serve as a blueprint for the challenges of today, not only for the dialogue of the past.

The Tree & the Roots

So “Moses wrote their departures according to their journeys … and these were their journeys according to their departures.” The majesty and magic of Jewish history, the Bible is intimating to us, is based on the synthesis between “departures” and “journeys.” The departures – the points of reference that have always defined Judaism – ought to serve as catalysts for the journeys of the future, invigorating growth and inspiring expansiveness. Conversely, the journeys toward new horizons ought to be “according to their departures,” founded and inspired on the timeless values of our faith and our Torah.

Just as Moses wrote the first chapter of Jewish history, we all are summoned to write our own. Let the tree grow taller and taller, but let it never fail its roots. Rather, let the roots exclaim, “Look how beautiful and tall my tree has grown.”

Reb Sholom of Belz says that whoever learns and completes Rashi on the Parsha each week is assured that he will be able to sit in the Mesivta of Rashi in Olam Habah.

The Rebbe of Pinsk-Karlin told over the following story:

There were a group of students traveling to Meron, and they flipped over, causing the death of 3 of them, R’L. The chavrusa of one of these students was extremely saddened by the death of his dear friend. One night this dead friend came to him in a dream and said: “Don’t be sorrowful. Remember how we used to learn chumash and Rashi, every week, with great diligence. Now, when I came to the Upper World, they judged that I should be admitted into the chamber of Rashi in Gan Eden, and therefore there is no need for you to be in sorrow”.

11 July 2010

This is a sample of what is happening across Europe and the Western World.

JEWS LEAVING SWEDEN ......... AMID GROWING ANTI-SEMITISM

Vosizneias. "Sweden, a country long regarded as a model of tolerance, has, ironically, been a refuge for Eilenberg’s family. His paternal grandparents found a home in Malmo in 1945 after surviving the Holocaust. His wife’s parents came to Malmo from Poland in 1968 after the communist government there launched an anti-Semitic purge.

"But as in many other cities across Europe, a rapidly growing Muslim population living in segregated conditions that seem to breed alienation has mixed toxically with the anger directed at Israeli policies and actions by those Muslims — and by many non-Muslims — to all but transform the lives of local Jews. Like many of their counterparts in other European cities, the Jews of Malmo report being subjected increasingly to threats, intimidation and actual violence as stand-ins for Israel.

“I didn’t want my small children to grow up in this environment,” Eilenberg said in a phone interview just before leaving Malmo. “It wouldn’t be fair to them to stay in Malmo.” ...

"a much larger screaming mob of Muslims

and Swedish leftists

who threw bottles and firecrackers"

"...“I was very scared and upset at the same time,” recalled Jehoshua Kaufman, a Jewish community leader. “Scared because there were a lot of angry people facing us, shouting insults and throwing bottles and firecrackers at the same time.

"Alan Widman, who is a strapping 6-foot-tall member of parliament and a non-Jewish member of the Liberal Party who represents Malmo, said simply, “I have never been so afraid in my life.”

"...Anti-Semitism in Europe has historically been associated with the far right, but the Jews interviewed for this article say that the threat in Sweden now comes from Muslims and from changing attitudes about Jews in the wider society."

Marcus Eilenberg, a 32-year-old lawyer whose grandparents found refuge in Sweden after the Holocaust, recently left for Israel after repeated anti-Semitic experiences.

Malmo, Sweden: The city of Malmo Sweden is located in the south of Sweden, and is Sweden’s third largest city after Stockholm and Gothenburg. Malmo Sweden was one of Scandinavia’s first modern settlements and has long attracted visitors for the interesting architecture that can be found located throughout the city. The convenient location of Malmo Sweden with its close proximity to Copenhagen [where Jews fled to as a safe haven!] makes it a popular tourist destination.

05 July 2010

#50) A new report released by the United Nations is publicly calling for the establishment of a world currency and none of the major news networks are even covering it.#49) Arnold Schwarzenegger has ordered California State Controller John Chiang to reduce state worker pay for July to the federal minimum allowed by law -- $7.25 an hour for most state workers.#48) A police officer in Oklahoma recently tasered an 86-year-old disabled grandma in her bed and stepped on her oxygen hose until she couldn't breathe because they considered her to be a "threat".#47) In early 2009, U.S. net national savings as a percentage of GDP went negative for the first time since 1952, and it has continued its downward trend since then.#46) Corexit 9500 is so incredibly toxic that the UK's Marine Management Organization has completely banned it, so if there was a major oil spill in the North Sea, BP would not be able to use it. And yet BP has dumped over a million gallons of dispersants such as Corexit 9500 into the Gulf of Mexico.#45) For the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.

#44) It has come out that one employee used a Federal Emergency Management Agency credit card to buy $4,318 in "Happy Birthday" gift cards. Two other FEMA officials charged the cost of 360 golf umbrellas ($9,000) to the taxpayers

#43) Researchers at the State University of New York at Buffalo received $389,000 from the U.S. government to pay 100 residents of Buffalo $45 each to record how much malt liquor they drink and how much pot they smoke each day.

#42) The average duration of unemployment in the United States has risen to an all-time high.

#41) The bottom 40 percent of all income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.

#40) In the U.S., the average federal worker now earns about twice as much as the average worker in the private sector.

#39) Back in 1950 each retiree's Social Security benefit was paid for by 16 workers. Today, each retiree's Social Security benefit is paid for by approximately 3.3 workers. By 2025 it is projected that there will be approximately two workers for each retiree

#38) According to a U.S. Treasury Department report to Congress, the U.S. national debt will top $13.6 trillion this year and climb to an estimated $19.6 trillion by 2015.

#37) The federal government actually has the gall to ask for online donations that will supposedly go towards paying off the national debt.#36) The Cactus Bug Project at the University Of Florida was allocated $325,394 in economic stimulus funds to study the mating decisions of cactus bugs.#35) A dinner cruise company in Chicago got nearly $1 million in economic stimulus funds to combat terrorism.#34) It is being reported that a 6-year-old girl from Ohio is on the "no fly" list maintained by U.S. Homeland Security.#33) During the first quarter of 2010, the total number of loans that are at least three months past due in the United States increased for the 16th consecutive quarter.#32) According to a new report, Americans spend twice as much as residents of other developed countries on healthcare, but get lower quality and far less efficiency.#31) Some experts are warning that the cost of bailing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could reach as high as $1 trillion.#30) The FDA has announced that the offspring of cloned animals could be in our food supply right now and that there is nothing that they can do about it.#29) In May, sales of new homes in the United States dropped to the lowest level ever recorded.#28) In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has ranged between 300 to 500 to one.#27) Federal border officials recently said that Mexican drug cartels have not only set up shop on American soil, they are actually maintaining lookout bases in strategic locations in the hills of southern Arizona.#26) The U.S. government has declared some parts of Arizona off limits to U.S. citizens because of the threat of violence from Mexican drug smugglers.#25) According to the credit card repayment calculator, if you owe $6000 on a credit card with a 20 percent interest rate and only pay the minimum payment each time, it will take you 54 years to pay off that credit card. During those 54 years you will pay $26,168 in interest rate charges in addition to the $6000 in principal that you are required to pay back.#24) According to prepared testimony by Goldman Sachs Chief Operating Officer Gary Cohn, Goldman Sachs shorted roughly $615 million of the collateralized debt obligations and residential mortgage-backed securities the firm underwrote since late 2006.#23) The six biggest banks in the United States now possess assets equivalent to 60 percent of America's gross national product.#22) Four of the biggest U.S. banks (Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup) had a "perfect quarter" with zero days of trading losses during the first quarter of 2010.#21) 1.41 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009 - a 32 percent increase over 2008.#20) BP has hired private security contractors to keep the American people away from oil cleanup sites and nobody seems to care.#19) Barack Obama is calling for a "civilian expeditionary force" to be sent to Afghanistan and Iraq to help overburdened military troops build infrastructure.#18) On June 18th, two Christians decided that they would peacefully pass out copies of the gospel of John on a public sidewalk outside a public Arab festival in Dearborn, Michigan and within 3 minutes 8 policemen surrounded them and placed them under arrest.#17) It is being reported that sales of foreclosed homes in Florida made up nearly 40 percent of all home purchases in the first part of this year.#16) During a recent interview with Larry King, former first lady Laura Bush revealed to the world that she is actually in favor of legalized gay marriage and a woman's "right" to abortion.#15) Scientists at Columbia University are warning that the dose of radiation from the new full body security scanners going into airports all over the United States could be up to 20 times higher than originally estimated.￼￼#14) 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved for retirement.#13) The FDIC's deposit insurance fund now has negative 20.7 billion dollars in it, which represents a slight improvement from the end of 2009.#12) The judge that BP is pushing for to hear an estimated 200 lawsuits on the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster gets tens of thousands of dollars a year in oil royalties and is paid travel expenses to industry conferences.#11) In recent years the U.S. government has spent $2.6 million tax dollars to study the drinking habits of Chinese prostitutes and $400,000 tax dollars to pay researchers to cruise six bars in Buenos Aires, Argentina to find out why gay men engage in risky sexual behavior when drunk.#10) U.S. officials say that more than three billion dollars in cash (much of it aid money paid for by U.S. taxpayers) has been stolen by corrupt officials in Afghanistan and flown out of Kabul International Airport in recent years.#9) According to a report by the U.S. Department of Transportation's Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the baggage check fees collected by U.S. airlines shot up 33% in the first quarter of 2010 to $769 million.#8) Three California high school students are fighting for their right to show their American patriotism - even on a Mexican holiday - after they were forced to remove their American flag T-shirts on Cinco de Mayo.#7) Right now, interest on the U.S. national debt and spending on entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare are somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 to 15 percent of GDP. By 2080, they are projected to eat up approximately 50 percent of GDP.#6) The total of all government, corporate and consumer debt in the United States is now about 360 percent of GDP.#5) A 6-year-old girl was recently handcuffed and sent to a mental facility after throwing temper tantrums at her elementary school.#4) In Florida, students have been arrested by police for things as simple as bringing a plastic butter knife to school, throwing an eraser, and drawing a picture of a gun.#3) School officials in one town in Massachusetts are refusing to allow students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.#2) According to one new study, approximately 21 percent of children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010.#1) Since 1973, more than 50 million babies have been murdered in abortion facilities across the United States.

it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

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Ein Od Milvado

LIVING in Eretz Israel is the equivalent of all the Mitzvot of the Torah (Sifri, Parashat Re'eh, TOSEFTA, AVODA ZARA 5:2)

Fortunate is he who merits in his life to FIX HIS RESIDENCE in Eretz HaKodesh (Zohar Hakadosh Iii 72b) and remove from your heart this false belief that a man has more blessings outside the land (Alshich Hakadosh, Ki Tavo 28:6)